Helene Black: 1997 :: Suspended Reflections

Universal Life Insurance
Commissioned Installation for the Universal Life Insurance Head Offices in Nicosia Cyprus.
1997-2000
Architects: Athos Dikaios Associates
Photographs: Robert Edwards
This specially designed artwork is, on request by the architect Athos Dikaios, installed inside four pyramids in the ceiling of the head offices. Each pyramid is 270×270×90cm.

Article by Glyn Hughes published in the Cyprus Weekly on March 10, 2000.HIGH, high up at Universal Life, there is a permanent installation for which you have to look up to the ceiling to appreciate.
This in itself is something of a breakthrough.
From the windows, there is a spectacular view of the northern range with Pentadactylus peering over those mountains as if waiting to give a handshake.
The nearby high-rises are not all complete and it is possible to look down on huge cranes carrying blocks of marble with the friendliness of loading a village bus.
But in the topmost Italian pear wood-pannelled rooms of Universal Life, it is the ceilings that matter. After a collaboration with the Bank’s project manager, Adamos Constantinides and architect Athos Dikaios, Helene Black has installed/tacked-into the ceiling of three rooms four ‘inside out’ pyramids.
These site-specific wonders, created by the artist who has her Defragmenting van Gogh piece in the Vincent van Gogh Museum, at Arles, certainly takes our art scene in a new direction.
Upwards in every way.
You observe the space inside the pyramids. The rooms appear to be on the top floor and perhaps you could imagine the tops of the pyramids breaking through the ceiling and turning the roof like a tiled Anish Kapoor. But this is not so, as I suspect there is a space between the top point of the pyramid and the roof. A ca-ravan to the moon!
Helene chose the theme of the pyramid, because its monumentality is such a strong element, providing a dramatic perspective for the visual elements.
The form has the principle of balance and she feels symbolically the shape represents the levels of man’s development. Presenting the Arts Page with an intriguing plan, demonstrating signs and notes which cover the head (correct speech), the hand (correct action), eye (correct thought), the artist states that the representational is translated into principal elements, while the relationship of these forms is based on geometry and symmetry.
It is all worked out. The hand shapes represent activities and power. And she says hand movements constitute a secondary language of expression, which enriches the spoken.
This may to some readers of the Cyprus Weekly, appear slightly esoteric and verging on art-speak, but this is how Helene Black creates.
It is very serious stuff and very welcome in an art scene where so often the bland leads the bland.
Helene on light and its reflective qualities: “An inherent feature of this installation is the source of light. The visible colour is derived from incidental and transient reflections. The spectator perceives different colours when in movement, due to the diffraction of light from the grating film. The introduction of this subtle colour is the value of the potential of diversity and quality through individual action”.
Helene on light: “The metal forms are released from their gravitational weight by being suspended above the viewers eye level. Their verticality gives them an upwards lightweight motion. The horizontal rods thus become the stabilising element. A visualisation process translating as the quality of dynamism – suspended symbols of spontaneity and flexibility”.
There are three rooms. The first is the reception room and the artist considers that the pyramid’s spatial composition serves as in introduction.
The next room is the boardroom and here there are two pyramids (think of that long table) and they reflect the diversity and flexibility of thought of what will go on there.
The third room is the Executive Director’s and Helene has made it the most complex one – the pinnacle of responsibility; the axis where the flow of responsibility converges.
It doesn’t matter that the last pyramid is over the director’s head when he considers ceiling prices or that the academically inclined may miss a portrait of the boss in oils with golden frame, Helene Black’s site specific pyramids are intellectually integrated into Universal Life’s very structure and if you care to look upwards, you will have sculpture for thought and beauty to behold.
The wavering ‘hands’ are rectangles of shimmering, elongated Murano glass, fused with pure silver leaf. The fibre optics are like frozen comets.
The ‘darts’ which give both rhythm and flight instead of being chaotic, like bats in a high rise vault, appear to be at the ready to fly over the mountains, leaving a trail of brightness. They also – to me – refer to Van Gogh’s latter imagery in Arles.
The square-shaped ‘frames’, informally placed at the base of the open pyramid, most certainly give aesthetic weight and allude to the earth.
The very air could be the desert. While the whole concept reaches for the stars.
Excellent.